Heya, hope everyone is doing well. For those who haven't heard yet, the Orphan Works Act of 2008 was introduced to congress a couple weeks ago. Sorry, I'm a bit late to ring the bell here. There's one for the house of representatives and another for the senate, slightly different from one another. I suggest anyone who is interested read em:

The Senate, S. 2913: [link]
The House, H.R. 5889: [link]

What I got out of them personally made me feel a lot better about this thing. It seems that if a user refuses to pay a surfaced creator, then the user wouldn't be able to use an orphan works defense, and it would revert to a normal copyright case (able to get attorney's fees and everything. That's what I was most worried about before). I'm not enthusiastic about the independent databases they want to set up...I remember seeing somewhere before that they'd rejected the idea, but apparently not... but as long as it's not overly expensive, it's fine with me. I don't publicly show most of my sketches anyway (though I'm worried for anyone who does).
I'm more for the house bill than the senate one too, since in the house bill, there's a requirement to submit a search to a court before being able to use a work. I've seen arguments that say this would be too expensive for users (see below article) but as artists will have to put their work in these registries to protect it, I don't see why there shouldn't be one more barrier for users. In fact, it seems like for the small amount of good this bill will do, it creates a serious hassle for both sides of the argument. I don't understand why they don't just make it available for non commercial use.

For anyone who wishes to write to their congressmen (I'll be writing to my senator) try this linky: [link]
It's a very quick way of sending opposition letters, courtesy of the IPA. Those guys really hate this bill...

Some links:

[link] <---ASMP current status. Includes point by point comparison to the old bill.
[link] <--- Judiciary Leaders Introduce Bipartisan, Bicameral Orphan Works Legislation
[link] <---PDN Online article
[link] <---Pro-orphan works guys who don't like the house version of the bill.

On another note, I wanna apologize for not adding new art in like...a year. Work, school, and misc. projects have just eaten up any time to do personal stuff, and it's got me feeling like any creativity I had has just drained out. Well, I'm gonna try to get updating again when I'm off school for the summer. I definitely need to work on my time management skills. srsly.

Hey again, I'm updating the journal because I've been reading up a bit more on the bill and on arguments made and wanna correct some pretty alarmist assumptions I got caught up with.

There is no Orphan works bill before congress. It hasn't been introduced yet! I had stated at the bottom that letters and such will be ignored if you send them before the bill is actually introduced to congress. Yet a lot of these comments I'm reading here and elsewhere seem to indicate that many people are already getting on with it. Slow down a bit, will ya? We can't be 100% that it is just like the previous bill until we can actually read it.

There are also some people who seem to believe this will be an end to creativity. Come on, that is just silly. If the bill is very similar to what it was in the 2006 congress then yes, it'll have a negative impact on creative professionals and to a lesser extent creative individuals in general. This does not mean there will be no new art.

I also ignorantly stated that the bill would strip creators of passive copyrights. Well, I can only say 'my bad' to that, it was careless of me. However, I've found that the danger is not that copyrights will be stripped but rather it will allow them to be ignored legally. I think it's important to understand why this is a concern and why everyone claiming that passive copyright protection will still protect you may be mistaken.

People can only ignore a copyright illegally under current law, and they do so at the risk of a very damaging lawsuit (with the exception being 'fair use', I believe?). I think it is generally agreed upon, correct me if I'm wrong, that the majority of our current copyright protection comes from the ability to file these lawsuits. If you ask why this is, it's because there is no one in the government who is responsible for finding and investigating copyright infringements. It is up to the rights holder to find the violators of their copyright, and it is also up the the rights holder to make sure they don't get away with it. If the new bill takes into account the suggestions given by the U.S. Copyright Offices report back in 2006 ([link]) then the ability to bring an infringer to court would be made several times more difficult. The copyright office has suggested that severely limited compensation be given in lawsuits that assert the orphan works defense. They call it 'reasonable compensation' and have considered capping it at a few hundred dollars. They also have advised denying the payment of attorney's fees by an infringer to the creator, even if the creator wins the case. This means that the creator who pursues a lawsuit against an infringer would expend massive amounts of time and energy to be left in debt that s/he may never recover from. And for what? It will only mean that the infringer stops using your one (or more) piece(s) of work. Filing a lawsuit will become such a financial risk for the creator that an infringer will be encouraged to believe they will not be brought to court. If these terms are included in the upcoming bill, then the only protection copyrights actually afford us will be taken away. This is, personally, my biggest concern. Sorry for the long read.

As to those who think Orphan works is a great cause: yes! it is! It would be awesome to have all that old work that is truly orphaned out in public. It is a serious problem for academic institutions like schools, libraries, museums, etc. It is a good cause... but if the loopholes in this bill are still there, are still wide open to legally allow exploitation of work that is not truly orphaned, then we need to make sure it is not allowed to go through without change. What this bill needs to do is make true orphan works available without allowing potential abuse of contemporary artist's work.

As to how I think the bill should be changed, I will direct you to asmp's report made last month. The report outlines the dangers to photographers and other visual artists, and I agree with their proposals to exclude commercial usage. I hope the bills sponsors have taken them into account:
[link]
[link]

I'll also give you these links, which include viewpoints that do not exclusively defend the artists. Please take the time to go through them

[link] <--- short video by Lawrence Lessig. Argues that the 'diligent search' requirement may hurt the institutions it is meant to help.

[link] <---The Illustrator's Partnership Orphan Works resource page, mostly from the last time the bill was introduced (careful, there's a lot)

[link] <---livejournal that mostly criticizes Mark Simon's article. Lots of informative links found at the bottom. not sure if I should post them here or not.

[link] <---Recording of an interview between Mark Simon and Brad Holland, has some interesting info about the bill's creation near the middle-end

[link] <--blog following orphan works

I was alarmist before, and I can't apologize enough for that, but it is still extremely important that creators watch out for when this bill is introduced. It should be soon, and again, I'll be updating when it does.

aghk, I'll be 19 in about a week. 19. That's like...almost 20. My awkward teen years are coming to an end...! though I know that no matter what age I get to I'll still feel like an 11 year old on the inside. I anticipate being one of those creepy old people browsing the game store trying to kick up a conversation about resident evil 11 and final fantasy XLVI with the chillins...

anyway... my twin brother got me twilight princess as an early present. Yeah, I'm only just playing it now, a year after it's release...though I've had to really limit my playtime. Doing that is difficult for me, because although the zelda franchise has ceased to be the most innovative, the games are still very fun. And so pretty! I really love the environments and the twilight baddies, especially the big red-headed birds. The design, the trippy twilight world environment, and the creepy muffled honking noises they make combine to create an atmosphere that I can only describe as delicious. Still weird seeing Link, Zelda and the rest in such texture-y, realistic graphics though ...

I also received the Invader Zim DVDs, which was lovely cause I haven't seen any Zim in a long time. Only been able to watch a few eps, but it's filled with the dark and bizarre humor I enjoy so much... Really, Nickelodeon forever earned my distrust when they not only decided to cancel the show, but also refused to sell the rights to another network so it could continue elsewhere. What jerks. At least I have the eps shown in pencil storyboards to look forward to.

hm...sorry for gushing on. It's just that I'm a fangirl of both these things and felt the need to spew about them over the internet...

Going back to school on tuesday too. I managed to snag the very last spot in our figure drawing 1 class, and am very much looking forward to it. That and oil painting, which although oh so much fun, is oh so expensive. Especially the strong colors, which I cannot do without.

Yes, not dead. Though technically since I was dead for a short period and am now alive again, that would make me undead, explaining my sudden and voracious urge to devour the brains of the living...

I haven't posted art here in a while because...most of the stuff I've been doing has been practice and unfinished stuff. The rest of the stuff could be called finished but it does, in my very honest opinion, suck balls. I've also learned how to do 3D stuff. I'm having a bit of trouble doing satisfactory uv maps and rigs, but for the most part it's really...nifty

I hope everyone is having a lovely summer

edit: no more new commissions/projects/etc. for now. Thanks

Sorry about this, I'm just feelin a need to get this off my chest somehow...I don't usually go into these kinds of things in depth on more public internet places (or with anybody, really) like this, because every time I attempt to say something personal it always seems to come out...well...stupid. And also because it is my sincere, heartfelt belief that blogging is eeevil.

Been a bit down because of my art junk... Over the holidays I looked back at the work I did the past year and it got me feelin gloomy...cause I just didn't do enough to improve!
Mind, I've always felt that the most important thing in doing art is that you love it...and I do enjoy it, very much so. Whenever I pick up a stylus or a pencil or a brush, etc., etc., I just get swept up in it and it's a great feeling. But I also wanna become better...partly cause I wanna make a living at it, partly personal pride, and also because I probably care too much about what others think. I didn't try enough new things or practise enough or do enough work in general to make me feel at all happy about the past year.

I gotta try harder, dammit...! do some daily drawing excercises or somethin... every time I try to start doing something like that I get preoccupied with other things and blow it off though... and I get too worried that I'm doing something wrong somehow and it completely trips me up.

This would have been way more relevent if I posted on sometime like the new year. I guess this could be my 21 days late resolution...attempt to improve myself! try new things! etc., etc.!

(speaking of which, wasn't 21 days later a movie? or wait, it might have been 28 days...that was a good zombie flick)

sorry for boring ya anyway. Just got one more thing to say.

Since I uploaded it last august, a lot of people have asked about a print for Strange love. I never made one cause I drew it at a fairly small size and also cause it would've needed borders to be accepted. I was lookin through my old art files, saw the big file and thought what the hell.

should be accepted sometime tommorrow/today, I think (it's 5:30 a.m., I've been having trouble sleeping) so if anybody's interested, have a lookie.

man, I wish I had money for these print things though...I've never had a lot of posters or pictures to hang up, mostly cause the stuff I see in stores usually suck. But it would be great to have some of my favorite work large size on the wall. Not just on dev, too. What I wouldn't give for a nivbed or Andrew Jones print... ;_;

Damn you, overrated financially-parasitic college education!!

I have to go back to it on monday

(I'll shut up now)